The first full production of Percival’s Players (CCS Drama Group) will be Arsenic & Old Lace. Even though my daughter has graduated and gone on to college, I have decided to continue designing and producing the collateral for the plays. I really enjoy doing it.
When the Drama teacher told me they were doing Arsenic & Old Lace I almost immediately had a concept in my head. I was preparing the Playbill cover for the last play of last season, so the I rendered the concept to fit in a vertical space beside the other play for this year on the back.
In keeping with the design aesthetic we have developed, the graphics are solid elements and the color palate is limited to 3 or 4 bold colors. I chose to use lace as a design element, but decided to forgo people or glasses which have been used extensively before. Instead, I went with dripping blood for the death juxtaposed against the white lace. The idea was to visually represent the paradox of the genteel women and the havoc they wreak.
When it came time to move from concept to posters, shirts and other promotional material I started tweaking and refining the positions and interactions of the elements. I also had a certain amount of additional material that had to be included and some restrictions about the size and placement of the author’s name.
The final poster is true to the concept, but manages to fulfill the rest of it’s intended purpose.
On the poster, the defined edges allowed me to work the lace from the edge to the interior. On the T-shirt I would not have that potential, so I altered the orientation of the lace to create a edge with the lace.
Finally, I pulled in a seamless lace tile to create the element in the background of the tickets:
